“And the parasite?”
“Not my sphere of influence anymore,” Smith said. “President Castilla’s put a certain South African you know in charge of that part of the operation.”
Farrokh twisted around and looked up at Sarie. “Is this true?”
“One hundred percent,” she said, jabbing Smith in the shoulder. “From now on, the colonel here will be calling me ma’am.”
Smith grinned and considered a salute, but he wasn’t sure he could lift his arm that far.
“Have you been able to cure the people who have contracted it?” Farrokh asked.
She shook her head sadly. “Most of the victims we’ve tried to treat were already fully symptomatic. At that point, the brain damage is irreversible and there isn’t really anything we can do for them. I think that if we can catch the infection within an hour or so of transmission, a cocktail of existing antiparasitics might work. But so far we haven’t been able to find the right combination.”
“It’s still spreading, then?”
“I’m cautiously optimistic that it’s not,” Sarie said. “We don’t understand exactly how the parasite affects different animals, though, so we’re still running tests. The good news is that it’s too arid out here to have much wildlife, and the livestock is fairly easy to keep track of. I think we’re going to be okay.”
“And if you’re wrong?”
She put a hand on the Iranian’s shoulder. “Maybe you should try focusing on the bright side for a change. At least you’re not an ashy outline on some wall.”
Author’s Note
It all started for me when I was one year old.
My father came in and announced that he’d quit his job and joined the FBI — something my mother didn’t even know he was interested in. We were shipped off to her parents while he trained in Quantico and then quickly found ourselves in Salt Lake City, one of our many homes over the years.
As it turns out, this wasn’t as impulsive as it first seemed. My father grew up in a small cotton-farming town in southeast Missouri, and on a visit to his family when I was a teenager, my grandmother told me the story of his first encounter with the Bureau. It was 1953 and there had been a bank robbery in the area, prompting an FBI agent to interview the owner of the local general store. My father, then twelve years old, wandered in for supplies and hid behind a shelf to listen. When he got home, he told his mother about the experience — that the man had been “dressed real fine and talked real good.” And that one day he, too, would be a G-man. She just smiled.
Growing up in a Bureau family is about as interesting as it gets, but also a bit challenging. Of course, there are the constant moves that can be tough on a kid trying to fit in. Even stranger, though, is the sense of secrecy. It may be that my early training as a novelist came from filling in imaginary details to circumspect conversations I overheard. The need-to-know attitude is oddly pervasive, as anyone who has watched my father and me move a ladder will attest. It’s always teetering upright with him yelling “Left! Right! Not that far right, for Christ’s sake!” Now that he’s retired, I aspire to get him to just tell me the ladder’s final destination before we pick it up. I’m not hopeful, though.
Whatever the negatives, it was all worth it. How many kids get to have dinner with a man who, by law, cannot be photographed? Or drink a beer with the SAS? Or discuss Northern Ireland with the head of the Royal Ulster Constabulary? And then there was the time I came home from my summer job and was told that we were having dinner with an insurance salesman who needed help with the FBI-related sections of his third novel. He was nice enough to bring us a copy of his first effort. It had been published by the Naval Institute Press under the title
And how many people get to read about their college graduation dinner in history books? It was 1988 and my family was at a restaurant in London where my father was the legal attache. About halfway through the hors d’oeuvres, someone from the embassy came in and told us that a Pan Am flight had gone down in a little town called Lockerbie. That was the last I saw of my father for months.
With all this cloak and dagger, it was hard not to be a huge fan of thriller novels. The first I can remember reading was
So it’s a great honor for my eleventh novel to be part of the Covert-One series. Hopefully, you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Kyle Mills
May 12, 2011
About the Authors
Robert Ludlum was the author of twenty-six international best-selling novels, published in thirty-two languages and forty countries. He is perhaps best known as the creator and author of three novels featuring Jason Bourne:
Kyle Mills is a
SNEAK PREVIEW!
Originally introduced in Robert Ludlum’s smash hit
Now he is back in the launch of a new international thriller series.
Please turn the page for an early look at
A new novel written by Paul Garrison
Available winter 2012 wherever books are sold.
Prologue
Ogden’s a great town if you like hiking and mountain biking and skiing.” Doug Case gripped the broken armrests of his secondhand wheelchair and pretended they were ski poles. “That’s what I’m doing here, since you
